How prevelant are subtle cheats?

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his blind ambition
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How prevelant are subtle cheats?

Post by his blind ambition »

I often play on some of the more popular free-style servers.

Without naming names, there are a handful of players I sometimes encounter, who have the following properties.

1 They seem to be really good.
2 There is a big gap between their scores and everyone else.
3 If you have ST, it is impossible to sneak up on them. They will always somehow stay out of your way, or turn around.
4 If you have ST and are hiding in an enclosed space, they will often fire a 'random' bullet or two into it.
5 There are hard to hit.
6 There is a higher probability they will be holding a good flag.

I believe (without hard evidence) that these players are using modified clients that decloak ST players (and possible some other 'subtle cheats', such as flag coloring, that improve their edge). When I see these players, I generally play for a minute or less, and then leave, because it's no fun playing them, and I prefer to play with an unmodified client.

Am I imagining things? Is anyone else seeing this?

HBA
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tainn
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Re: How prevelant are subtle cheats?

Post by tainn »

While such cheats definitely exist, most of the factors you named are usually what differentiates a great player from others. As such, the named factors, at the very least, are not something that we overly focus on when passing on the judgement of banning a cheater - it is usually other indicators that give them away. It can trigger attention flags, but not much more than that.

This is especially the case at FFA maps.

To elaborate a bit, good players are on a constant lookout for Stealth users, avoiding dangerous corners and looking around at all times. If corners have to be traversed, however, shots are usually fired at them, just in case someone is hiding in there, which sort of encloses points 3 and 4 in a lot of cases. Dodging at last moment is also many times an indicator of a player who knows their radar, for point 5.

As for flag holding, especially those who want to dominate the score list above all others, they will drop flags in a rapid succession whenever they can, so they can get a good flag as fast as possible, to squeeze out fast streaks before they ultimately die; that's why you might see them having quite a lot of uptime with good flags (most notably WG, ST and even SW at compact maps), for points 2 and 6.
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Re: How prevelant are subtle cheats?

Post by his blind ambition »

No player should be 100% at avoiding STs after several years of encounters. I do not see/hear these players shooting into every blind corner.
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Re: How prevelant are subtle cheats?

Post by tainn »

I cannot make any claims because I do not know how exactly it went down in your scenario.

However, if you manage to catch any that seem suspicious like that to you, please feel free to send me a private message with their nickname and the server you were on, explaining a little bit about the situation in specific, and I'll see if anything can be done about it.
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Re: How prevelant are subtle cheats?

Post by Zehra »

Cheating is not as widespread or non-existent as most assume.

It usually is one or two major problematic players to either a few random isolated incidents, as well as some cycles of little to no activity.

As for subtle cheats, some are mistakenly identified as "lag" and visa versa. For players gaining the same flags over and over, this may be due to flag zones or plug-ins. For players "spotting" ST over 60% of the time, it probably is skill, but it shouldn't be more than 90% of the time, especially when multiple players have ST. For players being hard to hit, either good at dodging, high to mid lag, or a form of the "narrow"/"skinny" cheat may be responsible.

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Re: How prevelant are subtle cheats?

Post by JeffM »

Zehra wrote: Sat Jun 13, 2020 3:27 pmIt usually is one or two major problematic players
When you only have 20ish people playing at a time, that's 10% of your playerbase cheating.....
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Re: How prevelant are subtle cheats?

Post by Bullet Catcher »

Don't just leave when an opponent is so good that you aren't having fun. Switch to observer and follow them for a few minutes to learn their playing techniques.
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